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Master: Strategic Communication

AP Style Book and APA 7 Manual

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About the style formats

Communication students have two style formats that will be used in your course of study: 

 

The AP Stylebook (Associated Press)

The style of The Associated Press is the gold standard for news writing. With the AP Stylebook in hand, you can learn how to write and edit with the clarity and professionalism for which their writers and editors are famous. Master the style guidelines of news writing, editing, and common usage with this indispensable guide that is perfect for students and professional writers everywhere

APA Publication Manual, 7th Ed. (Am. Psychological Association)

APA 7 is used for academic or scholarly writing using an author-date citation style that uses in-text citations and a reference list. It seeks to provide consistency in citing and writing scholarly papers. APA 7 is used in the Social Sciences and Humanities areas.

Use this to guide the formatting of: 

News stories, headlines, social media posts, and other journalistic writing. AP's rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, word, and numeral usage are unique to news writing. 

Use this to guide the formatting of: 

A research paper, a thesis, an article summary, a list of cited works (references), and other academic writing. APA 7 rules on grammar, spelling, punctuation, capitalization, abbreviation, word, and numeral usage are unique to academic writing.

Ex:  Names

Always use a person's first and last name the first time they are mentioned in a story. Only use last names on the second reference.

Ex.  Authors

Author surnames (last names) are followed by a comma and space and then initials for their first and middle names, e.g. Jane Smith appears as Smith, J. Put a full stop after each initial and a space between the initials, e.g., Lee, S. A.

Use the AP Stylebook Online

The AP Stylebook Online is the AP Stylebook but better. It includes:

— Updates throughout the year, with email notifications as the Stylebook's editors add or change entries.
— Ask the Editor, where you can search thousands of previously answered questions in the archive and submit your own query.
— The ability to create your own custom listings and add notes on entries.
— Search functionality that makes it easier to find all listings relevant to your query using either simple or advanced searches. Your custom notes and entries are all searchable, too.
— Mobile optimization.
— The Briefing on Media Law's framework for understanding legal questions commonly encountered in news gathering and publishing.
— Specialized chapters on sports, business, punctuation, data journalism, health, and science, news values, polls and surveys, and digital security for journalists. New is a chapter on inclusive storytelling, while the chapters on religion and social media are revised.

Use this manual to help with APA Formatting 

Concise APA Handbook: 7th Edition by Iida, Ruegg, de Boer, Araki, & Agnello (2020).

Call Number: eBook. Click the title to view the book online.

This book provides basic APA 7 formatting information that is concise and easy to understand with clear examples. This is NOT the APA Publication Manual, 7th edition.

APA Style covers the aspects of scholarly writing most pertinent to writing in psychology, nursing, business, communications, engineering, and related fields. It specifically addresses the preparation of draft manuscripts being submitted for publication in a journal and the preparation of student papers being submitted for a course assignment.

The Publication Manual does not cover general rules explained in widely available style books and examples of usage with little relevance to the behavioral and social sciences. 

Using AP Style

Using APA 7th edition

APA 

 

References are covered in Chapters 9 and 10 of the APA Publication Manual, 7th Edition

Click the tabs above related to the content list below to learn more about the related APA formatting. 

Find video tutorials and more APA 7 resources in the complete APA guide.

Reference List Entries

Religious works, e.g., Holy Bible
Basic Citation Elements Citing Course Resources
Citing articles from databases Citing Tests or Instruments, see the tab above
Understanding DOI or URL use In-Text Citations/Quotations
For dissertation format, see the tab above

eResources APA 7 (websites)
What to do when citation elements (e.g., date, page numbers) are missing? APA Student Paper Format Checklist

From Chapter 8, "Works Credited in the Text", p.253, APA 7th Ed. Publication Manual.

  • Cite works that have influenced your work, whether you use direct words, paraphrases, or point to their research and ideas.
  • Choose to cite primary sources rather than secondary sources whenever possible.
  • If you use facts and statistics, identify your source unless they are common knowledge.
  • You may need to secure copyright permission to use lengthy quotations or complete tables
  • Generally, all of the citations used in your text will point to an item listed on your reference page. Exceptions to this rule include personal communication, quotations from research participants, and general mentions of websites or periodicals.

APA, 7th ed., uses an author/date style. This attribution includes the author's last name, followed by the date.

Examples: Narrative paraphrase places the author/date in the sentence: 

The hymns of the church, according to Little (2019), ground us in foundational theology.

Example: Parenthetical paraphrased citation places the author/date at the end of the sentence within parentheses ( ).: 

The hymns of the church ground us in foundational theology (Little, 2019).

Both examples point to the full citation in the reference list which is shown below:

Little, D. A. (2019). Why sing hymns? One Magazine, 16(1), 54-55. https://doi.org/11.20873.edu00002000

Short quotation: 

  • Fewer than 40 words.
  • Double quotation marks.
  • The period follows the parentheses.
  • Parenthetical or embedded citation including page number(s). A parenthetical citation will be included within the punctuation.
  • Ex. taken from the APA Style Blog:

Effective teams can be difficult to describe because “high performance along one domain does not translate to high performance along another” (Ervin et al., 2018, p. 470).

Long [block] quotation:

  • 40 words or more.
  • Set off in block - indented five spaces.
  • No quotation marks.
  • The period comes after the quote and not after the parentheses.
  • Ex. taken from the APA Style Blog:

Researchers have studied how people talk to themselves:

Inner speech is a paradoxical phenomenon. It is an experience that is central to many people’s everyday lives, and yet it presents considerable challenges to any effort to study it scientifically. Nevertheless, a wide range of methodologies and approaches have combined to shed light on the subjective experience of inner speech and its cognitive and neural underpinnings. (Alderson-Day & Fernyhough, 2015, p. 957)

DOI or URLs

This page addresses when to include digital object identifiers (DOIs) and uniform resource locators (URLs) in APA 7th ed. references. The information below comes from the APA 7th Ed. Style Blog

What is the DOI or URL?

The DOI or URL is the final component of a reference list entry. 

  • A DOI is a unique alphanumeric string that identifies content and provides a persistent link to its location on the internet. DOIs can be found in database records and reference lists of published works.
  • A URL specifies the location of digital information on the internet and can be found in the address bar of your internet browser. URLs in references should link directly to the cited work when possible.
When should you use the DOI?
  • Include a DOI for all works that have a DOI, regardless of whether you used the online version or the print version.
  • If a print work does not have a DOI, do NOT include any DOI or URL in the reference.
  • If you have both a DOI and an URL, only use the doi number. 
  • If an online work has a URL but no DOI, include the URL in the reference as follows:
  • For works without DOIs from most academic research databases (library databases), do not include a URL or database information in the reference because these works are widely available. The reference should be the same as the reference for a print version of the work.
How do you find a DOI number?

Most citations include the DOI, but in many cases, you will need to investigate whether there is a DOI associated with the article. Here are some ways you can do that. 

Format of DOIs and URLs

Follow these APA 7 guidelines to format DOIs and URLs:

  • Present both DOIs and URLs as hyperlinks (i.e., beginning with “http:” or “https:”).
  • Because a hyperlink leads readers directly to the content, it is not necessary to include the words “Retrieved from” or “Accessed from” before a DOI or URL.
  • It is acceptable to use either the default display settings for hyperlinks in your word-processing program (e.g., usually blue font, underlined) or plain text that is not underlined.
  • Leave links live if the work is to be published or read online.
  • Follow the current recommendations of the International DOI Foundation to format DOIs in the reference list, which as of this publication, is as follows:
    • https://doi.org/xxxxx
  • The string “https://doi.org/” is a way of presenting a DOI as a link, and “xxxxx” refers to the DOI number.
  • The preferred format of the DOI has changed over time. Although older works use previous formats (e.g., “http:/dx.doi.org/” or “doi:” or “DOI:” before the DOI number), in your reference list, standardize DOIs into the currently preferred format for all entries. For example, use https://doi.org/10.1037/a0040251 in your reference even though that article, published in 2016, presented the number in an older format.
  • Copy and paste the DOI or URL from your web browser directly into your reference list to avoid transcription errors. Do not change the capitalization or punctuation of the DOI or URL. Do not add line breaks manually to the hyperlink; it is acceptable if your word-processing program automatically adds a break or moves the hyperlink to its own line.
  • Do not add a period after the DOI or URL because this may interfere with link functionality
DOI and URL shorteners

When a DOI or URL is long or complex, you may use short DOIs or shortened URLs if desired.

  • Use the short DOI service provided by the International DOI Foundation to create short DOIs. A work can have only one DOI and only one short DOI; the short DOI service will either produce a new short DOI for a work that has never had one or retrieve an existing short DOI.
  • Some websites provide their own branded shortened URLs, and independent URL shortening services are available as well. Any shortened URL is acceptable in a reference as long as you check the link to ensure that it takes you to the correct location.
The correct format for the DOI 

Includes the http:// or https:// and should be hyperlinked.

 

Quick, easy-to-access online APA 7th edition guides - bookmark these!